ProQuest Criminal Justice database

Instructions

The purpose of this assignment is to create a comprehensive research paper that brings together the various components and skills that you have developed in the previous units. You should create a paper that responds to the following question using the mechanisms found in the four points below.

Question: Why do we have/Why do we need a separate system of justice for juveniles? Provide justifications that offer support for your position in each of the following areas:

1. Review the official data (as gathered in the Unit I exercise) relating to disposition of offending by those who qualify as juvenile to make sure that you have a full grasp of the nature and scope of the degree to which alternatives/sanctions/innovations/diversions are used to dispose of a case.
2. The explanations should be an application grounded in theory (as were summarized for Units II and V) and public policy (not personal experience, anecdotes, or opinions) from the ideas presented thus far and the available material that expands and updates those ideas.
3. It should also incorporate recent evaluative research from scholarly journals (you may use any of the articles provided in the assignments, supplemental readings, or what you find in your own search) on the various relevant arguments within the position chosen. You are encouraged to use one of the many research clearing houses that provide one-stop researching for programming and the degree to which it has been found effective (e.g. www.CrimeSolutions.gov, NCJRS, OJJDP). These are ready-made ingredients for this assignment and will provide a great head start for the grounded theory and philosophy component.
4. Finally, there should be a section of your own original work analyzing the degree to which the position presented is consistent with the philosophical goals of punishment that are the underlying and accepted logic for our authority to have such a system (deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, restoration, tolerance).

The paper should comply with APA format for written academic work and be four pages in length, excluding title and reference pages. Review the APA requirements for section headings and subheadings as the use of these will strengthen the organization of the work.

All ideas and information borrowed from other sources should be properly cited and included in a reference section. Any external sources used should be peer reviewed and no older than seven years from the publication date. Government sources of raw data do not need to be from a peer-reviewed source. A good start would be in the ProQuest Criminal Justice database in the CSU Online Library.